Gartner: Sticking to Windows XP until Windows 7 arrives is risky
By Ruben Francia
Gartner has warned enterprises that sticking to Windows XP until the release of Windows 7 may not be the best idea given Microsoft’s “poor” track record of shipping new products on time.
“If the release date slips, enterprises will find it difficult to fully eliminate Windows XP before ISV and Microsoft support [for Windows XP] ends,” Gartner analysts wrote in the note to Informationweek.
The warning was issued as a number of enterprises including government agencies indicate they may avoid upgrading to Vista because of the cost of required hardware, application compatibility, lack of drivers, and the absence of a service pack.
While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has vowed that Microsoft will never take so long to develop a new version of Windows as it did to produce Vista and the software company is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year time frame, the research firm advises enterprises to continue with plans for Vista, noting that “Microsoft’s track record for shipping new product on time is poor.”
In a survey conducted by CDW Corporation of 753 IT decision makers on Vista adoption, 48% had no firm plan to upgrade to Vista.
Another survey by InformationWeek also indicates some 30% have no plans to upgrade their company’s computer system to Vista.
Perhaps if Microsoft had spent more time refining Vista, it wouldn’t be facing a situation where corporations and individuals are seriously considering skipping Vista in favor of hanging out for Windows 7. If only…
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August 5th, 2007
LMAO. One of your old “articles” bashing Vista recently suggested XP was a safe bet until Windows 7 arrived, now which is it boyyyyz?? I made the similar comment as Gartner back then, that Windows 7 will most likely never ship on time because MS doesn’t ever ship ANYTHING on time. But their premise is flawed — people waiting for Windows 7 won’t be stuck “without” an OS if Windows 7 slips. Just because XP is unsupported by Microsoft doesn’t mean companies can’t stay on XP. Consultants will have a field day, and ISVs will release their own patches for Windows security issues, and the big-name anti-malware companies will have a field day until Windows 7 is there. And if it’s really important for a company to have a “supported” operating system, there are alternatives. If Mac and Linux don’t make more business-friendly applications and development environments by then, there’s more and more reason to believe that a great deal of the desktop infrastructure is moving to the broadband web where the underlying OS is a trivial question, and where more basic Mac and Linux workstations would become acceptable. Microsoft has known this for YEARS, which is why some Dot Net functionality won’t run on anything except Internet Explorer. But all that’s doing is trying to hold back the tide with a sand-castle fortress. Windows 7 is not going to be the next great operating system, any more than Vista was, simply because the operating system layer itself is becoming irrelevant as functionality and content become web-based fixtures.
March 30th, 2008
Gartner: Sticking to Windows XP until Windows 7 arrives is risky.
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Right, so thats why many government agencies, governments, school districts, the military and IT departments are moving to open source. The Philippines and Russia being the most recent examples.
Vista did nothing for Microsoft except prove to the world that looking for alternatives to MSFT is a better, more viable and less costly option.