By Tim Ferguson, 8 December 2008 16:22
NEWS
Windows Vista is making good progress according to Microsoft and users are by and large satisfied with the company's latest operating system.
Referring to Microsoft research, UK Windows product manager Laurence Painell told silicon.com: "We're now seeing that nine out of 10 customers that are using Vista are either satisfied or very satisfied with the experiences that they are having on a regular basis."
Painell added Vista has been the fastest selling Windows OS ever with around 180 million licences having been sold between its launch at the beginning of 2007 and August this year.
One of the main issues with Vista, particularly for businesses, was the initial lack of compatibility with a significant amount of software and hardware.
Vista now supports more than 77,000 devices and 2,700 software packages, according to Microsoft.
"It's pretty difficult to go into a retailer and find a device that would not work for Windows Vista," Painell said.
Despite this, in a recent silicon.com CIO Jury, none of the 12 CIOs said they plan to move to Vista.
In October, research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif) found that more than half of those surveyed were "exploiting" XP compared to just four per cent for Vista.
The Tif research also found more companies are investigating Vista's successor, Windows 7, than the current OS.
Microsoft's Painell admitted: "Some [businesses] plan to move onto Windows 7 and skip Vista."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this year he could accept some businesses bypassing Microsoft's latest OS as long as they come back for Windows 7.
Painell said although no firm dates have been announced it's unlikely the first Windows 7 service pack will appear much before 2011, meaning moving to Vista still makes sense.
Microsoft also recently announced a version of Windows that runs over the internet from inside Microsoft's own data centres, dubbed Azure.
Comments
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1. Roger Huffadine
"It's pretty difficult to go into a retailer and find a device that would not work for Windows Vista," Painell said -
Peripheral suppliers want to stay in business and have, usually reluctantly, made devices and drivers for Vista.
That still leaves billions of working peripherals that are not compatible with Vista.
and
I have no idea where their research is coming from because nearly everyone I know who has used XP thinks Vista is a bag of nails.
2. Matt H
There goes that bloody paperclip in Word again... randomly changing words!! It should quite clearly have read "dis-satisfied or very dis-satisfied with the experiences that they are having on a regular basis" shouldn't it Mr Painell?
3. Karen Challinor
yes you can walk into a shop and see row upon row of nice, shiny, new, expensive equipment that is plug and play compatible with Vista
but if you have an existing office with equipment that works well together and you start to introduce Vista, say because one of your older PC's finally dies and you can't find a like for like replacement
you suddenly find that half your peripherals don't have drivers for Vista and the only way to make them work is to replace them which, apart from being money you didn't want to spend, probably introduces incompatabilities with the other O/S's and so you have to upgrade again spending yet more money you didn't want to
further any OS upgrades are not just simple "buy a license, shove a disk in and wait an hour or two" jobs, oh no
it's "buy a license, shove in the disk and get a shopping list of parts that don't work with Vista and also need upgrading" or "buy a new machine and scrap a perfectly servicable one"
either way it's yet more money
and if you don't buy a new machine with sufficient raw compute power to model the galaxy or if you have the temerity to upgrade an existing machine that ran quite quickly you find that your investment runs like a drugged slug
so Vista is very satisfactory as long as you have extremely deep pockets and don't mind spending your way out of a problem
Microsoft certainly didn't ask any of the people I deal with
4. Guy Reynolds
I just wonder what these massive sales and satisfied customer figures are actually based on.
I have just bought in 6 new PCs to replace failing old machines, and yes they have Vista Licences but also all of them have XP downgrades so that they will run with our existing hardware and software, and without the need to retrain staff on how to use Vista.
So Micrsosts massive sales and satissfaction figures are potentially out by at least 6.
5. Charles
No business or government using Vista should be considered "Green" or environmentally friendly considering the range of older equipment that needs replacing, the extra power needed for the computer.
6. xISO_ZWT
Your post is certainly a masterpiece of well executed FUD. But this is the on-going trend to "freeze the market" until the release of Vista 7.
7. Andersen John
I am satasified. Thank you M$.
8. Rob
Ditto, I'm satisfied too, works better than and more reliably than XP did.