By Tim Ferguson, 1 October 2008 15:03
NEWS
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is still playing second fiddle to XP with business users, with more enterprises confessing to checking out the unreleased Windows 7 OS than its predecessor.
More than half (58 per cent) of businesses using Microsoft technology are "exploiting" Windows XP compared to just four per cent for Vista, according to the 'reality checkers' research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif), seen exclusively by silicon.com.
Tif's corporate IT reality checkers survey helps its members quickly compare the progress and position of their companies' IT against the technology choices of other members.
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Tif also found that 35 per cent of organisations describe themselves as "not yet interested" in Vista.
The OS most people appear to be developing or piloting is XP, with 12 per cent of businesses saying they were doing so compared to five per cent for Vista.
Interestingly more businesses said they're currently investigating or analysing Microsoft's next scheduled OS, Windows 7 (30 per cent), than Vista (14 per cent).
In contrast, seven per cent of businesses even said they're still exploiting Windows 2000 although 19 per cent said they are currently replacing or "sunsetting" it.
Back in April, research showed Vista uptake among businesses was slow during 2007, although a quarter of businesses said they planned to upgrade in 2008.
The main reason given by Tif members for not moving to Vista was a lack of business requirement to do so.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 7 is having a similar battle with its predecessor IE6, with a fifth of respondents saying they're not yet interested in the newer version of the app.
Almost two-thirds of businesses surveyed (65 per cent) said they are exploiting IE6 compared to four per cent for IE7. However, 14 per cent said they are currently piloting IE7 with the same proportion using it in isolation.
Almost a quarter (23 per cent) said they are analysing and investigating IE8 which is currently available in beta form.
The full results of the Tif reality checkers survey can be found here.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. David Dewick
Lack of interest in Vista for business, or home use for that matter, is hardly surprising. Lack of drivers for peripherals such as scanners and printers is one issue, and even when new peripherals are bought, supposedly Vista compatible, often their functionality is compromised when compared to that available with XP. Inability to synchronise PDAs with Outlook, and the intrusiveness of UAC doesn't help. The inability, simply, to relocate users' My Documents folders in their entirety to a different disk drive without resorting to extensive registry hacks underlines Microsoft's lack of understanding of the needs of end users - why must they continue to assume that everyone is happy to dump everything on drive C:?
2. Phil rae
Ahhh, businesses and their unforgiving grasp of Internet Explorer 6... the biggest bane to any web designer.
3. Karen Challinor
at the end of the day XP does everything people need and it does it with half the hardware footprint of Vista
4. Matt H
After recently buying a new PC with Vista bundled, I have to say I was beginning to enjoy using it. That was until SP1 came down and ruined every Web Browser I had installed! Firefox crashes intermittantly, as does IE7, Opera and even Safari! The only browser that seems to work for any length of time is Google Chrome, but even that struggles now and then. I'm seriously considering removing Vista and giving up entirely on it. When will Microsoft fix these issues?