Vista struggles to attract enterprise users

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Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is taking a while to catch on, with just 6.3 percent of enterprise users on the OS by the end of 2007.

And according to research by Forrester Research, most upgrades were from users of Windows 2000 — which lost around six percent of users — rather than XP, which Vista is intended to replace.

Around a quarter of enterprises plan to upgrade to Vista in 2008 although Forrester said companies may change plans and wait for the release of Windows 7 — pencilled in for the second half of 2009.

Adoption of Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), has also been sluggish, with just 30 percent of enterprise users on it 15 months after its launch.

Slightly more than 70 percent of those surveyed were still using IE6 at the end of last year, despite the imminent arrival of a beta version of IE8.

In contrast, Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 virtually replaced Firefox 1.5 the same period after its release.

The proportion of users on Firefox actually doubled during 2007, with 18 percent using it at the end of the year. The proportion of users on all versions of IE fell by 10 percent.

The survey quizzed more than 50,000 users from 2,300 large enterprises over the course of 2007.

Talkback

Replacing XP with VISTA is like taking a step backward, with all the new memory, and hardware requirements, not to mention compatibility problems. As far as IE7 adoption, IE7 is IE6 in a new wrapper, so why upgrade? It is just as buggy as IE6 and not much more secure. They need to start new and do a complete rebuild.

ator1940 3 April, 2008 13:44
Reply

Unlike home users, it is costly for enterprise to upgrade, it's not just a case of insert the CD and you're done; there's data migration, software from other vendors which might not immidiately be compatible, in some cases user training etc. So it is understandable why they'd take their time.

Vista is more secure but isn't that big an improvement from XP overall, if you factor in hardware requirements and all the other compatibility issues that have plagued Vista, it makes business sense to hold out or even skip Vista and wait for Windows 7!

harpless 3 April, 2008 18:50
Reply

I agree.
But lets have a look.
The developement of Linux started more than 15 years ago.
And "they" had a head start as it was based on Unix, a proved multi-user multitasking system.
Windows was based on QDOS, a absolutly minimalistic piece of software for a PC (Personal Computer) never intended for anything else.

All knowledge, all background, all thinking within Microsoft is based on a code base built on the PC. All those in power are children of that background. (take Bill, discard Ball).

Now, they have the money, indeed, to rebuild from scratch.
But they do not have the TIME.
With Windows 7, or what ever, they will always pach the same code base because there is no alternative, because they do not have the time.
Add to that the fact that Bill is only interested in consumer electronics that could produce yet an other monopoly.
And then there is his silly quest to be an inventor, the chief arhitect.
But he never invented anything (the tablet anyone).

Microsoft has simply run out of time, and preserving the monopoly of today, is all there is left to do (bye Ball).
The complete lack of controll over "hardware" does not make it easier.

lars 4 April, 2008 00:47
Reply

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