Business Warming Up to Windows 7, Cooling on XP

By Jane McEntegart
published

A new survey shows that businesses are finally starting to let go of Windows XP and turn towards Windows 7.

Dimensional Research recently conducted a survey of nearly 1,000 IT professionals and found worries about upgrading to Windows 7 had decreased while worries about maintaining Windows XP had increased.

The survey found that 87 percent of survey respondents plan to deploy Windows 7 compared to 47 percent who had plans to deploy Vista at a comparable point after its release. Further, 46 percent of the total surveyed revealed they have plans to migrate even before the release of SP1. DR reports that 25 percent of people expressed concerns about Windows 7 performance but this is down from 47 percent last year.

However, upgrading an entire network to a new OS is not an easy, or cheap task and this is something that those surveyed are concerned about. The survey showed that 60 percent of the respondents were worried about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7, but that figure is down from 72 percent last year.

Similarly, the cost of maintaining a system that is nearly a decade old can be costly; 40 percent of the respondents said that they're worried about the hassles of maintaining Windows XP as it gets older. This figure is up from 28 percent last year.

Read more about the survey here.

Jane McEntegart
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • godwhomismike
    Policy here: Lets be cautious with rolling our Windows 7, and hold on to XP, because having technicians chasing after viruses and wiping and reinstalling XP (due to poor security in XP) is a better use of IT resources than upgrading to Windows 7. I'd say a significant amount of work orders lately are related to having to rebuild XP machines killed by viruses and other security holes, which Windows 7 would be immune to.
    Reply
  • godwhomismike
    godwhomismikePolicy here: Lets be cautious with rolling our Windows 7, and hold on to XP, because having technicians chasing after viruses and wiping and reinstalling XP (due to poor security in XP) is a better use of IT resources than upgrading to Windows 7. I'd say a significant amount of work orders lately are related to having to rebuild XP machines killed by viruses and other security holes, which Windows 7 would be immune to.
    And, most of the computers here have at least 2GB of ram, and at least a 3GHz Pentium 4.

    Other IT policy here, give all XP users admin rights. I don't understand why we aren't researching and testing Windows 7 Professional with limited accounts. When you have a huge organization and a tiny staff, you would think efficiency would be key. Until people let go of their fears of new things, begin to investigate and explore how they will improve the current situation, most of our IT staff will be devoted to chasing viruses, exploits, and malware that would not be an issue anymore if we do a proper deployment of Windows 7. Heck we got the hardware and resources, and already wasting an ungodly amount of time rebuilding downed XP machines (and techs hunting down drivers for hours).
    Reply
  • huron
    kami3kWell I would think it would be more problematic to use a OS on your entire network that isn't supported anymore.
    Last I heard, XP was supported until 2014.

    On a different not, we're pushing to deploy Windows 7 in a portion of our machines, but some custom apps may not run on it, so we'll be searching for solutions.

    I agree with most computers meeting and exceeding the requirements, so that is a much smaller issue for us as well.
    Reply
  • tommysch
    godwhomismikeAnd, most of the computers here have at least 2GB of ram, and at least a 3GHz Pentium 4. Other IT policy here, give all XP users admin rights. I don't understand why we aren't researching and testing Windows 7 Professional with limited accounts. When you have a huge organization and a tiny staff, you would think efficiency would be key. Until people let go of their fears of new things, begin to investigate and explore how they will improve the current situation, most of our IT staff will be devoted to chasing viruses, exploits, and malware that would not be an issue anymore if we do a proper deployment of Windows 7. Heck we got the hardware and resources, and already wasting an ungodly amount of time rebuilding downed XP machines (and techs hunting down drivers for hours).
    Fire the guy who gave everybody admin rights. Now.
    Reply
  • zak_mckraken
    @godwhomismike : IF you have a huge organization, you don't chase down drivers : you have an image ready to be installed to your computer as soon as it's back up.
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    zak_mckraken@godwhomismike : IF you have a huge organization, you don't chase down drivers : you have an image ready to be installed to your computer as soon as it's back up.

    Kinda what I was thinking. And most respectable organizations dont have some huge assortment of random brands and makes of computers. We have roughly 1,700 computers, and across those computers, maybe..... 12 different models total. And for those 12, we have ghost images we shoot to them, run windows updates, and update various software with patches and bam, you're back in the game. You can have one back up within about an hour with a fresh image. It's nice.
    Reply
  • godwhomismike
    mavroxurKinda what I was thinking. And most respectable organizations dont have some huge assortment of random brands and makes of computers. We have roughly 1,700 computers, and across those computers, maybe..... 12 different models total. And for those 12, we have ghost images we shoot to them, run windows updates, and update various software with patches and bam, you're back in the game. You can have one back up within about an hour with a fresh image. It's nice.

    We have at least 15 different models floating around here.
    Reply
  • sicpric
    I'm in the US Military and we are just now upgrading to Vista. You would think our policy makers would use a little bit more of their brains and skip to Windows 7. :(
    Reply
  • rockstone1
    It's not that hard- my school does this too- make images and put them on the machine.


    We put windows 7 once, used Lanfest- and then put XP again on them :p
    Reply
  • dude88yl
    windows 7 is lacking in some printer drivers from hp though. the only problems i've encountered from upgrading to 7.
    Reply