[Iria]

Microsoft hopes that the release of Windows 7 will solve problems ranging from desktop clutter to what Vista did to Microsoft's public reputation. But the toughest challenge may be to win over the group of people that arguably represent the software giant's biggest obstacle to success: Windows XP users.
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Source: PC World

[Customgamer1]

I sure hope people are willing to give 7 a chance. If you are still using XP give this a shot!

I would not be surprised even in this beta form that 7 is already better than XP ever was.


I still think Vista is better than XP, but not everyone does haha. 7 is better than both.

[Gastrian]

I'm more likely to upgrade Windows when I upgrade my machine and I think that may be the same for many people. A lot of XP hardware should be coming to its end of life soon so will likely force the upgrade.

[IvanV]

If someone's got a PC with XP and they're happy with how it runs, that's fine. But it's more or less about people that declare the new OS as bad a priori and who are very loud about that. And people like my dad who considers DOS great and Windows 3.1 tha best Windows ever, small, fast and (in his distorted memories) reliable and capable to run the same types of apps as today's OSes (except today he probably wouldn't touch AutoCAD 10 or 12 with a very long stick).

[Zardon]

a lot of people don't like change ....

[Tyrsonswood]

and some can't afford to change out functional hardware/software either......

[Matth]

Microsoft has a problem milking their obedient cash cow of upgrading users:

If there is not enough change, many will be "why bother".
If there is too much change, one possible response is "If I wanted different, I'd try Linux".

The evolutionary path of Windows to 3.11 was clear and decisive, it got considerably better at each step, as it was pretty rubbish before.

Win95 brought mixed 16/32 bitness, the start/taskbar that has remained (prettied up a bit) in all subsequent versions.
Win98, what else can you call it, and particularly 98SE, other than the peak of Win9x - Win95 with most of the bugs and niggles ironed out - a tough act to follow.
WinME, best forgotten, as the compatibilty issues with older software were greater than the under the hood improvements.
Windows 2000, conceptually, an attempt to move the NT based Windows closer toward the 9x appearance.
Windows XP, merged the home (9x) and professional (NT/2000) streams to a single NT based core.

Vista, well, what do you think of, for one thing, a mishmash of versions, the lowest of which lacks one of the most heaviliy promoted features. Ok, there are some under the hood improvements, but like XP, it's a 32/64 bit OS.

Not paid much attention to Windows 7 (boy, they really pushed the boat out with that name!), for instance, does it still have a 32 bit version?

After all, a 64 bit OS can run 32 bit code with a thunk layer, and any hardware that Windows 7 would make sense on is probably 64 bit capable, while the memory demands of modern software is pushing firmly toward 64 bit.

As for upgrading, probably won't other than with/for a new system, more to the point, I will be putting off any hardware upgrade decisions until Windows 7.

[Judas]

erm... orginal xp goers ..specially those that didn't buy a new machine when xp came out are anywhere from 6 or more years old.. some of which have computers running xp that are over 10 years old... (and in one case i know for a fact, is now 16 years old)

the biggest hurder is for people to get new machines.... not to appeal to them. Vista's already far superior to XP.. and win7 is just another large worthwhile leap over that again

[WaltC]

Business isn't going to roll out new OSes on any sort of massive scale immediately succeeding the release of any new version of Windows... Businesses don't operate that way. They update their hardware and software by attrition, only replacing older units with newer ones when the older units can no longer function well enough to get the required jobs done.

This has been the case with every new OS release since DOS, and you would think by now that some of the trade sites like PC World and InfoWorld and some of the rest of them would understand how OS roll outs happen inside businesses. They obviously don't understand because they keep scratching their editorial heads as to why businesses haven't run out and willy-nilly dumped whatever they are currently using just to replace it with Vista. The sites always unfortunately continue to erroneously imply that businesses haven't jumped all over Vista in a hurry because they don't like Vista and they think Vista sucks and they think XP is better. Completely untrue. Businesses always initiate upgrade cycles far slower and far more reluctantly than general consumers because their reasons for upgrading are much different.

Speaking of general consumers, it's not clear to me that PC World understands the difference between the retail consumer markets and the business markets for computers and software. Microsoft released an officially tally awhile ago on the number of Vista licenses it had sold in the first eighteen months of Vista's lifespan--Microsoft placed the number at 180,000,000, which works out to an average of 10,000,000 Vista licenses per month sold. It's only the general public which often runs out willy-nilly to replace its current OS with something brand new, and it sure seems as if this is exactly what's been happening with Vista.

Businesses don't roll out software in that fashion and never have. The businesses that aren't upgrading to Vista immediately are sticking with what they have for awhile longer because it saves them money, lots of money, and what they are using at the moment is sufficient to get the job done. The businesses that have upgraded to Vista since its release have done so because they need it to support the newer hardware they own that XP doesn't support very well at all. For business, OS deployment is strictly a matter of dollars and cents matched to the jobs that businesses require their computers to do.

I think it's sort of sad to read this kind of nonsense coming from websites like PC World--I mean, I'd expect that their perspective on such matters would be far more professional than it is and far more informative. Instead, it reads more like a gossip column--if Microsoft has seen its reputation "suffer" as a result of selling ten million licenses for Vista per month then I can only imagine that Microsoft is laughing about it all the way to the bank... Apparently, millions of people every month decide that they like Vista well enough to buy it, which ought to say it all.

From a more personal perspective, I've been using Vista Ultimate at home since March of '07. I started out with a dual-boot scenario booting between Vista x86 and Vista x64. From the very start, all of my DX9 games and my DX9 gpus ran just fine under Vista, and I wasn't running a single application which was incompatible with Vista. About a year ago I was happy enough with the state of x64 device drivers for my hardware that I scrapped the x86 partition and went exclusively x64 where I've been ever since. In all that time I cannot recall a single moment, hour, or day when even the thought of reinstalling XP entered my mind.

I have seen some laptops, however, on which any version of Vista should not have been installed because either the machines were so old that they lacked the hardware resources to run Vista as it was intended, or else the hardware was so old that the various OEMs and device manufacturers had no plans to support that hardware with Vista drivers. No doubt about it--the owners of these machines had no business installing Vista on them, and the OEMs who shipped such machines with Vista pre-installed had no business doing so. I'm still trying to work out precisely how the actions of these entities not employed by Microsoft somehow have served to tarnish Microsoft's reputation. But I do know that sites like PC World and InfoWorld seem to enjoy gossiping in the negative about anything Microsoft does as though they enjoy it. I long for the days when tech rags sought to inform us rather than to delude and manipulate us.

[Judas]

indeed.. there are businesses still using DOS machines simply because they are still able to do the job the owners want them to do... or because they haven't quit working yet

[IvanV]

Yeah, recently I heared of a story about a factory that was in a desperate search for a 486 processor a couple of years ago, as they had some DOS boxes working as some sort of controllers and after years of service one of them died, and since the code that ran on the machine was very hardware dependant (and noone in the company knew how it worked anymore), replacing it with a new machine was not an option.

[Gastrian]

The company I work for is linked to one of the biggest civil service departments in the UK and they'll start rolling this out from April this year (I only know this because they've asked if I got any special hardware/software for my disability). Three months just to get drivers sorted for a rollout should give you an idea of the length of time it takes to rollout hardware, especially if the company has staff in the thousands.

Another thing to consider is that a lot of the bigger companies will have IT contracts with companies like Fujitsu and IBM. As part of that contract the hardware will be given a "life expectancy" which is the length of time the contractor will be able to get spares and parts for the machines at bulk level and hence support the hardware. As this life expectancy comes to an end, as part of the contract the contractors will be required to replace the hardware. This life expectancy can be anywhere from 3 to ten years on average and if the2000 or XP machines would be replaced during the infancy of Vista it would be too much of a risk and a XP install would be used. If the replacement is now when Vista has matured then Vista will quite likely be the chosen OS.

[Mac Daddy]

Originally Posted by Zardon

a lot of people don't like change ....

Wiser words were never spoken!

[Mr cairo]

i still think some of the problem is they just made XC so damn good now the OS works like a charm after the patches and people are reluctant now to try anything new

for this to work MS need to make sure that it has good driver support some real top backwards compatabilty for games and apps and above all good customer feeedback from the beta

negative comments on this will hurt it as much as vista

[Judas]

majority of the drivers work straight out of the box for windows 7 that were built for vista....

so support will likely be in full swing.. but for the machine to take full control of the option of win7... they'll have to be slightly rewritten...