Microsoft finds difficulty in attracting Vista, IE7 users
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Vista has become the operating system most love to hate, IE7 and IE6 are the most commonly used browsers but they are far from the best. Microsoft is finding it difficult to attract new users to its sinking operating system and browser combination.
OneStopClick reports that by the end of 2007 only 6% of businesses were using Vista. A study of 50,000 coporate users revealed that 70% of those were still using the older version of IE (IE6).
The unwillingness of individuals and businesses could be attributed to two factors, some may have been waiting for the service pack to be released and some may be waiting for Windows 7.
A beta version of IE8 has been released but if those corporations haven’t bothered moving from IE6 to IE7, it’s doubtful they will move to IE8 in any form.
More users continue to flock to Mozilla’s Firefox browser which is just about ready to enter it’s third version and is one of the fatest browsers currently on the market right next to Safari 3.1.
Well, all I can say for Microsoft is that the company had a good run but it’s time to let go; there’s no salvation for it in sight this time unless Windows 7 becomes the "god of all operating systems" but Apple has and probably will retain that title.
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April 3rd, 2008
don’t think you mean “fatest”.
“…one of the fatest browsers”
April 3rd, 2008
[…] Original post by Jonathan Schlaffer […]
April 3rd, 2008
No way is OSX going to be an OS god. Great OS, too limited by the hardware you can use, and Apple is not currently enterprise friendly.
That’s not knocking the company, hard to argue with the unbelievable, recent turnaround.
IT needs and Apple policies aren’t currently aligned.
April 3rd, 2008
No, gary, I mean one of the fastest. Speeds between it and Safari are almost inconsequential and are probably the two fastest browsers, I’ll let those more qualified than myself figure out which one is faster.
I happen to prefer Safari (on Mac) but Firefox is noticeably slower on PCs in comparison (running on equivalent hardware).
April 4th, 2008
If you’re going to talk about fast, Opera seems to easily beat everything on my two systems.
April 4th, 2008
Firefox seems to have taken off like wildfire. Over a 1/2 billion has been downloaded since its release November 2004.
Thats only 3 1/2 years to go from nothing to over now 17% of the browser share, they must be doing something right. Maybe perhaps picking up where MSFT left off in the secure browser department?
Linux, despite the many naysayers saying it is not ready for desktop. Has been quietly growing every day being used for everyday applications from email, video, mp3, instant messaging all without the bloat or the cost.
See, Linux is boring,.. it does what it says it will do without bombastic pitchmen trying to “WOW” the public.
While MSFT decides to dump their extremely popular XP (leaving XP Home to low cost laptops until 2010). Linux is on the heels of releasing another version of Ubuntu 8.04 in about 20 days.
While MSFT is still working on the Vista issues, the French Police have adopted Linux and MSFT is not in their plans.
While MSFT is trying to deal with the latest EU fine, The City of Munich is now all open source, just like South America is heading to.
While MSFT has lowered prices on Vista, It was announced that WINE 1.0 (free program runs Windows under Linux) will be released in early June 2008.
While MSFT has fanboys praising Vista and slamming open source, 23,000 school computers in the Philippines are all going to Linux.
While MSFT released SP1 for Vista, Russia announced it is going to all open source by 2010.
While there is buzz about Windows 7 even though it is not scheduled for release until 2010. A few thousand more EePC laptops with Linux has been sold.
While MSFT Server 2008 was being worked on, the NYSE ( New York Stock Exchange) has announced that they will be using Linux servers.
MSFT has just put the final nail in their coffin by deciding to discontinue its most popular and stable operating system to date in favor of a bloated, buggy, ill received Vista that only maybe runs properly on maybe 20% of the worlds computers…if that. Amazing.
Linux and Apple are the clear winners for MSFT’s recent decisions about XP. Is Linux is ready for primetime? It is, and it got there with little fan fare or outrageous hype.
Will Linux ever be the number one operating system? No . But if they get the 17% share of the OS market, like Firefox got 17% of the browser share in 3 1/2 years. Then expect more than chairs being thrown in Redmond.
April 4th, 2008
Opera also isn’t very standards compliant… either. For a nice speed/standards compliant ratio, it’s hard to beat Firefox or Safari.
Opera has some strange behavior on many of the sites I regularly visit (radio buttons out of place, extremely tiny fonts, images displayed off-center… for me, it just doesn’t work great).
April 4th, 2008
Much of Firefox’s slow down is self inflected by the installation of the dizzying number of plugins and extensions. I was a bit surprised after upgrading to the Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 5 a few weeks ago, which had FF beta 3. The amount of digital flotsam I’d installed in the previous couple of years was an eye opener when the list of extras that were incompatible came up. Lot’s of them I remembered installing but stopped using after of weeks.
Opera has always been aggravating for me, except as my phone browser. Don’t see any reason to run Safari under Wine on Linux, and haven’t been that impressed on Windows, but I don’t iTunes either. I must be a Luddite.
April 5th, 2008
what many have failed to see, are that the intergration of Active X controls into application 5 years ago to provide web connecivity have forced many organisation to continue with IE6, both IE7 and firefox are not compitable older controls, when these systems move to modern web applications with web services you will see a rise in the adoption of newer operating systems, whether they be Linux,Apple or Windows.
Until then this artificial blocks remains.