6 Out of 10 Businesses to Skip Win7. Reason: COST and other concerns

[gumballguy]

This news makes me happy. I can't believe they took out the classic Start menu option in Win7 that was so much more functional than the new style.

And opening up an explorer window and trying to find the C drive beneath all the My XYZ garbage drives me bonkers.

There's a start bar killer (stable program) and a classic start menu (beta, crashes when you highlight a file it doesnt have access permissions for) so there will be a solution. But it will have to die eventually (say by win8, win9), because people will forget the superiority of the classic start menu over time.

That, and it's only the 5% that is BOTH well organised and knowledgeable who benefit from it. For everyone whos not a good computer user or not well organised, the xp menu is actually better.

QFT

i'm of the opinion that the next big business thing will be cloud computing. the factory i work at still uses one computer per HMI, we're not looking at spending money on new computers and a new OS. we'd rather spend the money on virtualizing the whole operation to SAVE money. if we do see a corporate migration to win7, it probably won't be until late '10 or early '11.

There's no way we'd do it. As we use a wide variety of software (100 odd different engineering programs), we need control over what computer something is running on to ensure compatibility. We've had problems before. If you're basically buying an offsite PC, then heck, put it in the server room or the data centre. Very rarely do we need insane computing power that warrants a cloud setup.

For smaller companies without so much software and compatibility problems, whats the point? The cheapest of cheap computers can run word + internet.


Sometimes I wonder if the success of cloud computing will be based on marketing.

[dinos22]

why are ppl surprised by this
vista and w7 is the same thing pretty much


you know the old phrase
same shi(f)t different package lol

[perkam]

Congratulations Microsoft, on learning after 30 years that there are consequences for your actions

Perkam

[YukonTrooper]

Tech: "Hey, boss, do you want to upgrade our system to Windows 7?"

CEO: "Does our current system have any problems?"

Tech: "No."

CEO: "What does Windows 7 offer that we don't have already?"

Tech: "It looks cooler."

CEO: "Does looking cooler make our system faster?"

Tech: "No. Possibly slower."

CEO: "I see."

Tech: "Yah."

/end discussion.

[halo112358]

why are ppl surprised by this
vista and w7 is the same thing pretty much


you know the old phrase
same shi(f)t different package lol

Seriously, I'm pretty pissed now that I paid for Vista (which was effectively a beta OS) and now the final comes out and I have to ing pay again.

re: the earlier discussion of the start menu, I hate to say it but I really like the auto-search feature, it's just not implemented well (thanks M$!) If you know what you're looking for or you use something frequently it's an awesome shortcut to hit [win] then type the start of the program then press enter (you can do all this in under 3 seconds) and the program launches. It's a lot faster than grabbing the mouse, hunting for the button, finding a menu, finding another menu, then clicking the program. Navigating nested menus between you and launching an app sucks balls.

To be fair the open source program launchy does a better job of letting you launch things from the keyboard than the vista/win7 start menu, it's so good that on win7 I hardly ever use the start menu to launch things I commonly use. The biggest feature the new start menu is missing is a frequency of use sorting on search results, if I have notepad and notepad2 on the start menu and I *always* launch notepad2 then it should be the first search result when I type "notep"

[Speederlander]

This goes back to my original claim that MS needs to adopt a modular approach to Windows that involves major upgrades without the "new" label. All aspects of the OS need to be upgradable via msdn membership or simply going to an MS online store. Want the latest networking enhancements? Get the Windows NetCore 3 upgrade. Want the latest gaming enhancements? Get the Windows Gaming Package 4.2 upgrade. Etc. Let people and businesses upgrade and customize and get rid of the "new OS" stigma. They would make better money that way anyhow.

[halo112358]

This goes back to my original claim that MS needs to adopt a modular approach to Windows that involves major upgrades without the "new" label. All aspects of the OS need to be upgradable via msdn membership or simply going to an MS online store. Want the latest networking enhancements? Get the Windows NetCore 3 upgrade. Want the latest gaming enhancements? Get the Windows Gaming Package 4.2 upgrade. Etc. Let people and businesses upgrade and customize and get rid of the "new OS" stigma. They would make better money that way anyhow.

Do you really think mainstream customers would pay to upgrade their kernel?

And do you trust M$ not to try and extract every penny from you to play the newest game?

Moving in the direction of a "pay per module" or "pay per update" OS just exposes you to being ripped off by the person controlling the platform and selling all the modules.

I can imagine a scenario where every single new game released on the windows platform requires a unique microsoft package that cost $0.99 on top of a yearly "maintenance" or "security" package with a hefty cost.

[RAW-Raptor22]

My School still uses dominantly PIII 733MHz machines with 128MB RAM running Win2000 and Office 2000/XP/2003 (about evenly split), and a few P4s...

They are never going to upgrade.

[Speederlander]

Do you really think mainstream customers would pay to upgrade their kernel?

And do you trust M$ not to try and extract every penny from you to play the newest game?

Moving in the direction of a "pay per module" or "pay per update" OS just exposes you to being ripped off by the person controlling the platform and selling all the modules.

I can imagine a scenario where every single new game released on the windows platform requires a unique microsoft package that cost $0.99 on top of a yearly "maintenance" or "security" package with a hefty cost.

Look around. Everyone complains about dropping lots of money at once. Small amounts spaced out are easier to stomach. Like boiling a frog in slowly heating water. I'm not commenting on the "trust" factor, I'm just saying it would make more money than a big new monolithic OS every 3 to 5 years. It would give the minimalist crowd the opportunity to keep all the crap off their PC they don't want w/o resorting to nlite/vlite type programs and it would let businesses standardize on one route (or multiple dep on business size) while gamers could go another and basic home users could go another yet again. The most stripped down version(s) could be marketed to low resource applications, etc.

[tomb18]

It seems to me that reuters did not speak to the right people, or to smaller companies.

Xp support will disappear in 2014, and most large corporations need to make plans before this. In addition, most will not jump on a new unproven OS such as Windows 2012 so Windows 7 seems to be the best choice. Most of these companies already have a roadmap and I bet that most see Windows 7 as the stable useful version of Vista.
As to XP being the best and there being no reason to change, well in a corporate environment, XP is just too expensive. The maintenance, (patch management) and security concerns are ridiculous and lead to overall stability issues that have to be dealt with. In addition, the world moves on, Office has to be upgraded eventually, since there are also support issues here.
My informed guess is that for most windows based corporations, Windows 7 will be the OS of choice especially combined with Sharepoint and the newest office. The reasons and the push for web 2 technologies will be overwhelming. Don't forget, that most large corporations have deals with MS and how MS licenses their products plays a roll.

[halo112358]

It seems to me that reuters did not speak to the right people, or to smaller companies.

Xp support will disappear in 2014, and most large corporations need to make plans before this. In addition, most will not jump on a new unproven OS such as Windows 2012 so Windows 7 seems to be the best choice. Most of these companies already have a roadmap and I bet that most see Windows 7 as the stable useful version of Vista.
As to XP being the best and there being no reason to change, well in a corporate environment, XP is just too expensive. The maintenance, (patch management) and security concerns are ridiculous and lead to overall stability issues that have to be dealt with. In addition, the world moves on, Office has to be upgraded eventually, since there are also support issues here.
My informed guess is that for most windows based corporations, Windows 7 will be the OS of choice especially combined with Sharepoint and the newest office. The reasons and the push for web 2 technologies will be overwhelming. Don't forget, that most large corporations have deals with MS and how MS licenses their products plays a roll.

Why would a company that's successfully running Windows XP upgrade to Win7? Liability? How often in the last year have you had to call M$ for support for windows xp?

[labs23]

Its not really that surprising. This usually happens when a new OS is on the market. It happens before and it will happen again in the future.
If Windows 7 is really good then it might be the next XP after all. Practical business people don't jump hurriedly based on promising performance, they're after some real tested figures.

[tomb18]

Why would a company that's successfully running Windows XP upgrade to Win7? Liability? How often in the last year have you had to call M$ for support for windows xp?

Do you have any ideas of the cost of maintaining the security patches in a large multi-national corporation? or maintaining a help desk where many times stability issues are apparent? In a large company, there is a lot of different software packages and there are a lot more issues needing support from the vendors. Many of them will first tell you to upgrade...many of the security patches have to be tested....we had a situation where a virus required a security patch from MS. It killed the application that was used, and we had no choice to switch to Linux taking 3 weeks. During the time the instrument (analystical chemistry equipment) was out of commision.
Multiply this by 10's of thousands of PC's and you begin to understand that there is really no choice for large corps to upgrade.
Manufactureres of third party software and equipment, move on to newer OS's since MS will not necessarily continue to support development on older platforms. It's a never ending cycle.
That said, even in our company we are using Office 2003...most companies are slow to change but they do and Windows 7 is the perfect opportunity, in the next 2-3 years. I suspect that most companies (large )will be there by 2012.
(too bad they still have a 32 bit version...)

Our company will be upgrading 40,000+ PC's...believe me we would avoid it if we can.

[halo112358]

Do you have any ideas of the cost of maintaining the security patches in a large multi-national corporation? or maintaining a help desk where many times stability issues are apparent? In a large company, there is a lot of different software packages and there are a lot more issues needing support from the vendors. Many of them will first tell you to upgrade...many of the security patches have to be tested....we had a situation where a virus required a security patch from MS. It killed the application that was used, and we had no choice to switch to Linux taking 3 weeks. During the time the instrument (analystical chemistry equipment) was out of commision.
Multiply this by 10's of thousands of PC's and you begin to understand that there is really no choice for large corps to upgrade.
Manufactureres of third party software and equipment, move on to newer OS's since MS will not necessarily continue to support development on older platforms. It's a never ending cycle.
That said, even in our company we are using Office 2003...most companies are slow to change but they do and Windows 7 is the perfect opportunity, in the next 2-3 years. I suspect that most companies (large )will be there by 2012.
(too bad they still have a 32 bit version...)

Forum vitriol aside, no, I don't know the cost of maintaining security patches in a multinational corporation and that's precisely why I asked the question. So you guys are considering upgrading OS to maintain your support agreements, right? Why do you do that? There are two reasons, one, you can force the vendor to "make the software work" and two, you can sue them if they don't. Right?

edit: how often in the last year have you had to call M$ for support for windows XP? how often have you had to call your 3rd party vendors for support for windows xp?

[tomb18]

I am speaking from the point of view of a high tech company. Sure, probably retail sales may just have some limited software and upgrading POS versions may not be necessary. However, most contracts are for support, but the support these companies offer is a version that works, but not necessarily on the version of OS you are running. We frequently are told that we have to upgrade this version of Oracle, that version of this and that, oh and btw, "our newer versions are supported on Vista" and MAY work on XP. We have one contract and we have spent many 10's of millions of dollars over the years and their newest software which is a big leap in technology forward, will not work with our version of MS Excel (plug in handing chemical structures). So what's our options? We have to upgrade Office which is a much larger expense than upgrading an OS! ($900 for Office pro X 40,000 vs $350 for an OS).
Its an never ending battle in the Windows world.

[halo112358]

I am speaking from the point of view of a high tech company. Sure, probably retail sales may just have some limited software and upgrading POS versions may not be necessary. However, most contracts are for support, but the support these companies offer is a version that works, but not necessarily on the version of OS you are running. We frequently are told that we have to upgrade this version of Oracle, that version of this and that, oh and btw, "our newer versions are supported on Vista" and MAY work on XP. We have one contract and we have spent many 10's of millions of dollars over the years and their newest software which is a big leap in technology forward, will not work with our version of MS Excel (plug in handing chemical structures). So what's our options? We have to upgrade Office which is a much larger expense than upgrading an OS! ($900 for Office pro X 40,000 vs $350 for an OS).
Its an never ending battle in the Windows world.

I need to preface this with "I am not a lawyer" so, IANAL.

Have you guys considered talking to your legal department when companies say "our newer version that fixes your bug works only under windows vista" ? IIRC if you buy a piece of software and it doesn't work, yet you have a promise that it does, then it's on the vendor to make it work *on the platform you bought it for* not on some later versioned platform. Especially so if they advertise XP compatibility or somesuch.

Part of what you're buying is a guarantee that the software works as advertised on the platform it's sold for, if there's a showstopper bug then it's the obligation (legal liability) of the software producer to fix it on that platform. If they don't, and you lose money, then you can sue them to recover that lost money.

[570091D]

Sometimes I wonder if the success of cloud computing will be based on marketing.

i don't want to get too far off topic, but there is a real use for cloud computing. imagine you are running a factory, you have say 15 lines with 4 machines per line. each machine has it's own HMI with it's own pc inside. the sole purpose for these computers is to run the wonderware program for that machine. does it really take a p4 with 512mb to run xp and a program that simply facilitates communication between an operator and a PLC? not so much... one could very easily set up a few servers to replace all 60 computers saving the company a lot of money in both power and maintenance costs.

the same can be said for many many offices, all they need is excel and outlook. so the decision comes down to win7 or virtualization.

[Yakyb]

I need to preface this with "I am not a lawyer" so, IANAL.

Have you guys considered talking to your legal department when companies say "our newer version that fixes your bug works only under windows vista" ? IIRC if you buy a piece of software and it doesn't work, yet you have a promise that it does, then it's on the vendor to make it work *on the platform you bought it for* not on some later versioned platform. Especially so if they advertise XP compatibility or somesuch.

Part of what you're buying is a guarantee that the software works as advertised on the platform it's sold for, if there's a showstopper bug then it's the obligation (legal liability) of the software producer to fix it on that platform. If they don't, and you lose money, then you can sue them to recover that lost money.

i cant wait for the first games company to be sued for releasing a broken game and then not support it

[Revv23]

QFT

i'm of the opinion that the next big business thing will be cloud computing. the factory i work at still uses one computer per HMI, we're not looking at spending money on new computers and a new OS. we'd rather spend the money on virtualizing the whole operation to SAVE money. if we do see a corporate migration to win7, it probably won't be until late '10 or early '11.

Yes. With 8 cores why not run 6 desks per machine? Currently at my office two 8 core machines could easily handle our entire load provided it had the ram. This is when computers are really going to get SCI-FI. I can't wait until I'm watching HD streaming movies on my blackberry from my work desk while on an airplane. It's coming.

[Vinas]

quite a few reasons:

if nothings broken, dont touch it since they think you will break it

cost to upgrade may not be viable

training on the new OS may be too costly or time consuming (yeah i know its just an OS, most end users will not see any difference, yet will get so lost for a few weeks).

Seriously, what if MS said ok, docx is not supported in XP only Vista... Similar to the DX10 thing for Vista/7. Do you think MS would get sued and also more businesses would upgrade?

Just an interesting thought. If I'm Microsoft how do I force businesses to upgrade? Ever since XP support was extended I thought they shot themselves in the foot.

[Vinas]

Don't forget, that most large corporations have deals with MS and how MS licenses their products plays a roll.

Yes. It's called SA

[halo112358]

i cant wait for the first games company to be sued for releasing a broken game and then not support it

I'd be all over that precedent, the industry standard of releasing every game in a broken state and then telling the customer to "wait for a patch" is why I don't buy games anymore. I think Valve is the only company I trust to sell me a game in a "finished" state without showstopper bugs.

[Donnie27]

I need to preface this with "I am not a lawyer" so, IANAL.

Have you guys considered talking to your legal department when companies say "our newer version that fixes your bug works only under windows vista" ? IIRC if you buy a piece of software and it doesn't work, yet you have a promise that it does, then it's on the vendor to make it work *on the platform you bought it for* not on some later versioned platform. Especially so if they advertise XP compatibility or somesuch.

Part of what you're buying is a guarantee that the software works as advertised on the platform it's sold for, if there's a showstopper bug then it's the obligation (legal liability) of the software producer to fix it on that platform. If they don't, and you lose money, then you can sue them to recover that lost money.

How Cow! I read about this happening to a local company just last month. They won and the other company appealed.

[XSAlliN]

And is that, suppose to be a news? Most companies (and I do mean "most - like 90%" or something close to that percentage) still use "Windows XP" for same...

Reason: COST and other concerns (like countability applications or some special made for that company - that have some compatibility problems with other OS, then Windows XP).

[IronWarrior]

And is that, suppose to be a news? Most companies (and I do mean "most - like 90%" or something close to that percentage) still use "Windows XP" for same...

Reason: COST and other concerns (like countability applications or some special made for that company - that have some compatibility problems with other OS, then Windows XP).

I agree, it's really a fact of life now.

When you have a fully working system that is running smoothly, why would you go to all the trouble of upgrading?

Untill that company needs X product that demands OS 7, than they won't upgrade.