Windows 7 Looks Like a Vista Nightmare, Repeated

By Chris Dannen

FastCompany.com

InformationWeek published results from an 1100-company survey suggesting that businesses will be extremely reticent to upgrade to Windows 7.

According to the report, 83% of the companies surveyed will delay their Win-7 upgrade until at least 2011, which means Microsoft might suffer another Vista-level adoption debacle if it doesn't move decisively to convince users to upgrade. Support for Windows XP, Microsoft's popular legacy OS, officially ends tomorrow, April 14.

The data cited by InformationWeek, which was collected by KACE, suggests that Microsoft's version confusion could be contributing to its incremental slips in marketshare. Linux, meanwhile, has seen adoption inch upward, likely at Windows' expense.

"Only a small percentage of businesses plan to migrate to Windows 7 in its first year of availability," says the KACE report. "Economic concerns and worries about compatibility" will be chief factors to blame. Only 42% of the businesses surveyed said they'd use Windows 7 after 2011, and 17% said they'd wait longer than three years before adopting.

Read more this news quote

image by FastCompany.com