By Tim Ferguson, 8 January 2009 12:53
NEWS
The majority of tech professionals claim their companies will never adopt Windows Vista.
That's according to the latest silicon.com poll, which asked readers when their organisation is likely to make the move to Microsoft's current operating system. Of more than 400 respondents, 59 per cent said it would never happen.
Of those planning to implement the OS at some point in the future, the majority said the deployment is unlikely to happen until 2010 or later (26 per cent of the total respondents).
A small minority - three per cent - said they will move onto Vista in the next 12 months, with a further one per cent planning to roll out the OS within six months.
Just 11 per cent of respondents said they'd already moved on to Vista, more than two years after its launch.
Microsoft has struggled to make Vista have an impact on the business world despite it being Redmond's largest-selling operating system.
In November last year, all 12 of silicon.com's CIO Jury revealed that they had no plans to embrace Vista, while in October the Corporate IT Forum found that Vista is continuing to play second fiddle to XP in enterprises.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is already getting the ball rolling with Vista's successor, Windows 7, which CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is ready in beta form.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Bob Sole
Yup, we've just decided to switch to Linux for all future development and use VMWare to support our "legacy" Windows (XP) apps. The Age of Enlightenment is upon us!
2. Daz Hughes
Not surprising. Vista became just about "good enough" with Service Pack 1, but it still requires new hardware to perform adequately. Why should businesses, especially in these tough economic times, throw out perfectly good PC stock ?
On the other hand, Windows 7 will be very deployable from the release candidate version, probably one of the first Windows versions where businesses will not need to wait for the first service pack before use. It's faster and leaner than Vista and more stable than XP. It's interface is easier to learn than Vista's for anyone moving direct from XP.
All MS need to do now is not screw up what they've done so far with Windows 7 - and fewer "versions" would be good. Lets face it, we just need Basic, Home and Pro/Business, like XP. There are so many "versions" of Vista and this has done nothing to enhance Vista's image.
3. Karen Challinor
I'm looking very hard at Linux, the only legacy application I have that I actually need is Outlook and thats mainly so I can synch with my PDA I would really prefer to use Thunderbird
so when Windows 7 comes along, unless it is a vast improvement and a lot cheaper I doubt I'll be getting that either
4. Nick Cole
The only reason Vista is the largest selling OS, is because of the tied arrangements with OEMs which mean they were forced to install it in new machines.
More complex systems need more time to design and develop, and similarly businesses or individuals need more time to see the benefits of investing in them. They want to see productivity and business gain from the effort involved in implementation and the subsequent knock on effects on support, training, adaptation and amendment of procedures and other applications.
Microsoft needs to spend more time on sorting out problems and bugs and should dispense with the 3 or 4 year life cycle mantra which will increasingly become insufficient with the increased complexity.
Far too much effort is put into the appearance and visual appeal of products instead of ensuring that the basic function which is what people really pay for works properly and better than the previous iteration. This has been the legacy of marketing departments preference for form over function.
If XP, 2000, NT or even DOS still do the job why change it just because Microsoft want you to?
5. anonymous
Fed up to the back teeth with Microsoft's policy of bring new operating systems out every two years with the problems of existing hardware and application incompatability. No wonder people are starting to move to Linux and open source software.