By Gemma Simpson, 29 November 2006 12:35
NEWS
More consumers will be buying Windows Vista next year than businesses, analyst IDC predicts.
During 2007, only 35 per cent of all new Windows operating systems deployed in companies will be Vista, while 90 per cent of home users will opt for Vista over other Windows offerings, said the analyst.
You whatÂ…?
Find out more about Window's latest operating system with silicon.com's Vista Cheat Sheet.
Al Gillen, research vice president of system software at IDC, said businesses will follow a decidedly more conservative adoption curve on Vista compared to consumers, who will take on the new Windows offering almost immediately.
Most UK IT chiefs aren't convinced Vista is for them and so will wait until at least 2008 to upgrade, according to silicon.com's CIO Jury user poll. A separate survey of European businesses found half have no plans as yet to upgrade to Vista.
Microsoft announced a deal last month offering cheap upgrades to Vista and Office 2007 for consumers buying new Windows laptops and PCs this festive season.
Comments
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1. Colin MacDonald
Surely this is no great surprise? Invariably new operating systems spell more hassle for IT departments and the addition of new bells and whistles are generally of little importance to businesses. In my own small business I leave operating system upgrades as late as possible till most of the bugs are ironed out. I prefer to spend my money on software that will actually perform a task that benefits my business. Ask somebody why they are upgrading to Vista and they probably can't tell you, it's for IT fashion victims!
2. Al
New software with holes the size of the Grand Canyon - that's what Microsoft is know for. Whether those are security chasms or irritating cross-app or cross-platform incompatibilities, I would never trust M$ to release a near bug-free o/s or s/w app when new.<BR><BR>Waiting 2-3 years sounds about the right amount of time to give M$ to fix most of their s/w bugs in new s/w. Actually that goes for most s/w developers' apps. Let the brave folks with their own s/w developer (who can fix bugs) try out really new s/w; otherwise give it a year or two to rid themselves of bugs.<BR><BR> But has anyone ever released a consumer-use ' software bug finder/catcher' program??? Does anyone intend to???
3. Simon
Do analysts really get paid for stating the obvious ?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 + 2 together and work out that when all the pc being sold in shops ahve vista installed, consumers are going to be running Vista ! Lets face it, the majority of purchasers end up with whatever rubbish the saleperson gets the best commission on.
4. Roy Lambert
"home users will opt for Vista"
I doubt it. It'll be more a case of you can have Vista preinstalled at no extra cost or you'll have to pay for an OS.
That's not what I call opting!
5. Lionel A Smith
I guess consumers will be railroaded into Vista by the usual tactics of ‘encouraging’ peripheral vendors (printers, cameras, scanners etc) to supply Vista only (and Mac as a sop) drivers for new kit.
Now if my experience with XP is anything to go by then once Vista is installed the suddenly you will not have full featured drivers available for existing kit. But then I am not sure of how well XP based drivers will be suited to the new environment.
As for the licensing terms, it seems to me that these warrant a consumer release date of April 1st 2007, for surely the joke will be on the users who suddenly discover that MS have more draconian control over their use of the PC and any issues which require a reinstall (such as security update breaking existing drivers – I still have an unresolved issue with a WA driver – overcome not by the WA vendor or MS but by my purchase of a wireless enabled laptop and networking to that) look set to be problematic – particularly if the user has access to only one machine. Technical support teams please note: not every user has a limitless supply of alternative computers on which to test things and some like myself are disabled and cannot get about easily.
Besides, policies which encourage rapid obsolescence of otherwise perfectly serviceable equipment should come under increasing scrutiny when the disposal of such equipment poses increasingly pressing environmental issues.