Well this is good. Encourages Microsoft to release a good well coded product. It better be equal or faster than XP, otherwise win7 might flop. Oh yea can it better be able to run Crysis maxed out, or you suck Microsoft ^-^

Ummmmm.... Since when do businesses ever do that? I was recently layed off from an uber-corporation, they'd been developing/testing their Vista image for about 2 years, and it has yet to pass UAT testing. Most of it came down to driver and software support(including internally developed software), FFS, they could've developed and certified a Linux image in less time than that without any help from the hardware vendors...

I know that my university computer administrators are planning to upgrade all campus machines to Windows 7. All the new machines will run just anything (minus games).

Since I work for the university, it just means that the next four years of my college career will be tough. Sure, the campus machines are all the same, but student machines I will have to work on could have XP, Vista, or Windows 7. Ugh.

I seriously doubt that the OEMs will be offering a Vista downgrade on their new systems once Windows 7 is released. Does this mean that these corporations are planning to hold off on replacing old desktops?

Our company will be adopting Windows 7 rather quickly.

Microsoft has only themselves to blame. I also think a large part of the reason companies my be willing to switch to a new OS is Microsoft's Carte Blanche wipe of it's entire interface for a new one. If you are going to make the switch, the time is now, when you end up with the same amount of interface relearning time if you stick with Microsoft or Change to a new OS altogether. Thus, if you were already leaning that way, this is the final push over to the dark side.

Of course, companies planning to switch to Vista and did not complete in time can just move right into Vista II, err I mean Windows 7.

Anyone who has vista on their home box wouldn't question why companies are very hesitant to go to 7.

Vista is the most annoying OS i have ever used, but it looks nice reminds me of Age of Conan and funcom's quality products.

"Computing enthusiasts, especially those who are using the beta, can’t wait to get their hands on final version of Windows 7"

I love that statement simply because half those enthusiasts will torrent the hacked copy, and the other half will continue to run windows XP because they don't want to pay 200 dollars for an operating system that doesn't work any better than XP does.

Apple needs to open OS X up to normal PC hardware, now is the time.

Well no duh, companies are not just going to switch to a new OS when it can cause so many problems, wither or not the OS is good doesn't matter.

And from what I read Dimension Research questions were not that good to begin with.

I've never dealt with Vista from an administrative standpoint (active directory, etc.) but from my personal viewpoint, it's an excellent OS. The only reason businesses shouldn't upgrade to 7 (or even Vista) is if (a) they're under-informed, or (b) use older hardware. I prefer Vista over XP, having used Vista for 7 months or so, now, for work and play.

I find it hard to believe they're willing to rid themselves of their PC hardware base and invest (likely 2 or 3 times as much) in Mac hardware and software, which is far less compatible with other hardware than Vista is.

I've used the beta for 7, also, and it's very impressive. I'm considering replacing all my OSs with 7 (even machines with XP).

Oh and FHDelux do you not realize the stupidity in saying W7 will be pirated and then say Apple should come out with OS X to normal PC hardware.

OS X would instantly become the most pirated software out there ffs. Not to mention, why would people buy a hugely overpriced Mac when they can just get a cheap PC and run OS X?

Really think before you speak.

Do you think that will be any cheaper, or less pirated, if Apple does release it (which they won't, considering it won't run with half the hardware out there...)?

Isn't it about time to acknowledge greatness?

WinXP - Best OS EVER

Well, presumably the corporations would still have their old XP liscenses, so it's only a metter of re-installing XP onto the new machines.

Also, 95% of "business computing", i.e., writing reports, memos, machine control, inventory management, and such, can be performed fairly well on an 5 year old machine - Athlon 2500 w/ 1gb ram running WinXP. If more computing power is needed for things like engineering / content creation apps, they'd get a proper workstation for those specific users, instead of upgrading every machine to "modern" specs.

The price shouldn't be any different from a normal OSX. They're not holding off the release because of hardware support, but the fact that their hardware division would bankrupt almost instantly.

That not the problem compatibility they goofed on vista many software packages that ran on xp don't run on vista.

example: i have a customer that does land survey there software is custom costed $60,000 does not work in vista they don't want to pay another 60k to get it working with vista.

In my book less than 100% compatibility is bad.

@fuser: Large corporations don't order desktops from dell with the standard dell crapware infested OS it comes with, they have the same techie people who install the PC at the user's desk install the OS via the corporations intranet, and nearly all have a custom version they've developed that includes their spying/monitoring software for tracking employees.

from all ive read from reputable web sites, businesses are holding off upgrading to windows 7 and will continue to run windows xp. also oems like dell will continue to offer downgrade to windows xp and microsoft will continue to extend support for windows xp. the problem is windows vista and the fact that windows 7 is vista with tweaks. i'm running it and products have the same problems with it that they have with windows vista, basically i'm having to apply the same workarounds as found on google to products that I run on Windows 7 as I've had to do to get them to run in Windows Vista. Also, I've had to upgrade my hardware, more powerfuly cpu and more memory, it's an improvement over Vista, but things like periodic shadow copies slow down my boxes. Windows 7 as with Windows Vista is just sluggish and the more I play with it the more disappointed I get with some of the kernel changes which results in stalls due to how Vista and how Windows 7 queues and schedules requests to harddisks, reminds me of some of the stalls people had when running Windows 9x, ouch... My machine has even periodicaly frozen for disturbing amounts of time without keyboard or mouse response while installing products that decrypt and uncompressed large packages. This being the worse.

Windows 7 isn't out. It may not even come out until sometime next year, so a year seems pretty fast to me.

I would guess the current economy would be an issue too. A lot of times the IT department doesn't get the budget it really needs, and in tough times it's one of the first places to take cuts. I think a new OS costing $300/computer may be a hard sell right now.

Come on, you have to operate your HDD in DMA mode. PIO mode won't get you far regardless of hardware.
I guess you don't have to enable DMA manually nowadays... like you had to in Win 9x.

@techtre: Most large corporations get those licenses for $10 or $20, medium to smaller might pay more. Only a small business with few computers would actually have to pay the full retail price. Prefered Microsoft Partner companies can even get employees free(or very cheap) Microsoft Software like Office 2007 to use on their home PCs(completely for personal use, not for work).

I won't touch it until late 2010 or even 2011 as well.
I do video/audio work as well as other stuff and my PC is not broke so why try and fix it ???

you got to be kidding me, dma is enabled. its not the hardware, same hardware runs great with windows xp, linux, ect, its vista, windows 7 because of all the background overhead, io...

I work for a corporate IT. I agree with the results of this survey. We are unlikely push windows 7 until 2011 or later. (We are still getting rid of 2000).

@surelyNot
That may be true with large corporations, but remember, most businesses in the U.S. are small businesses. We have about 20 PCs here where I work. We don't have any volume licensing options (forget about the pay as you go crap) so we'll be paying more than $6,000 to go from XP to 7 if the pricing rumors are true. Our budget for computer expenses this year: $3,000.
Add to that the fact our current (very expensive) Microsoft database program may need to be updated to work in Windows 7; it doesn't work in the beta.
Also, I thought the Microsoft Partner Program was for companies who sold Microsoft products?

Microsoft's problem is that with XP they finally wrote a mainstream OS that wasn't broken right out of the box. For most people / companies there is no compelling reason to move to Vista/Win7, after all why fix things that aren't broken?
It's a tricky position for MS to be in, and I can't see that the opening up of OSX is going to challenge the market dominance of XP for the same reason. Ie what is it that is broken about most companies XP installs that moving to OSX, or indeed OS-whatever, is going to fix?

i liked what you said at first. pretty funny. but windows 7 is much better then xp. iven had about 2 programs crash tho whole 4 months ive been testhing the beta. xp and vista had way more. also, its faster then exp, it just has more visuals. if you take them off, then its a little faster. apple is out of the question. i cant stand them period. the OS, or the hardware. if they upgrade to normal pc hardware, then your just going to be charged 400% of what it normally costs like usual.

Im sure your very good with computers, but have you tried compatibility mode? ive had ever vista only or xp only work with windows 7. give it a try at least

Thank you! "UNDER INFORMED." If you dont know how to use Vista and your a IT, you should be fired. SP1 is a very solid OS, i just think 7 is much better

Compatibility mode doesn't work. Apparently Microsoft does know about the problem; when I launch the install I get a message saying there is a known issue with the program. We use an older version of Microsoft Dynamics Nav called Microsoft Navision. I just wonder if they will work on the compatibility of the older program or just expect those users to upgrade to the newer version.

Apple could open their OS to work on normal PC hardware. They would run into the same problems that MS runs into.