Microsoft is preparing to finally close the book on the dark chapter called Windows Vista next week, as it officially releases its next-generation operating system, Windows 7. One of the biggest problems with Vista was the hardware cost for enterprises. Only six percent of PCs were capable of running Vista’s advanced features at the time of its release, Gartner reported in 2006. Only half of PCs were capable of running even the minimal Vista installation.
The situation is much improved today, Softchoice reported in a research note Thursday. The firm said 88 percent of PCs are capable of running Windows 7 — and 65 percent can run the operating system’s advanced features.
“We’ve seen a sea change compared to the landscape in which Vista was introduced,” Softchoice Services Development Manager Dean Williams wrote in the note. “The natural PC refresh cycle has more or less eliminated system requirements as a potential stumbling block to deploying Windows 7.”
The migration question is about “understanding the benefits of switching” and “implementing a plan to minimize any potential deployment headaches,” Williams wrote.
Economy puts drag on migration
Not so fast, Michael Cherry, vice president of research for Windows operating systems at Directions on Microsoft, said in a telephone interview. “Microsoft finally has a product corporate customers want, but I’m not convinced (enterprises) have the budgets to upgrade.”
In the current economic situation, “IT budgets are under increasing pressure, IT is under pressure to do more with less,” Cherry said. “If the economy wasn’t so bad, you might have enterprises doing massive rollouts, but in this environment I believe they’ll do more of a rolling rollout.”
Corporations won’t rush out to buy new machines for Windows 7, nor will they rush to upgrade older machines running Windows XP. “They’ll remove prohibitions from acquiring machines with the new operating system…