Survey: 84% won't upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year
Most enterprises will eventually migrate to Windows 7 — Microsoft's (MSFT) newest version of the world's dominant PC operating system — but they're not in any hurry to do so.
And half are thinking about switching to a non-Windows system, such as Apple's (AAPL) Mac OS X.
These are among the findings of a survey commissioned by KACE, a Mountain View, Calif., systems management company that hopes to cash in on what it is portraying as a bumpy transition.
The survey of 1,142 IT professionals conducted in March by Dimension Research found that the vast majority (84%) are going to wait at least a year to upgrade to Windows 7, despite the generally positive reviews from beta testers.
Fully 50% said they were considering leaving Windows altogether — up from 27% two years ago — and Mac OS X was the system they are most likely to switch to.
Among the survey's other findings:
- 53% of those who will upgrade to Windows 7 say that they are doing so primarily to avoid Windows Vista
- 67% state concerns about Windows 7, with 88% of those worried about software compatibility
- 83% will skip Vista and migrate directly to Windows 7
- 72% are more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying on Windows XP
- 14% have already switched or started the process of switching operating systems (up from 11% in 2008)
In addition to Mac OS X, enterprises are looking at a rainbow of Unix alternatives, as shown in the chart below:
The full survey is available through KACE here (registration required).
See also:
Lest we forget, for most folks a computer is a tool, not a toy or an end unto itself. I don't have to learn entirely new techniques when I get a new hammer; why should hours of study be required when I get a new OS.
And while we're on the subject, there is no excuse for the incompatabilities between software or for the poor security of OS's. The technology shoud be far beyond that point. If the OS wasn't equipped with all sorts of ways for outsiders to get into your computer (for updates, etc.), most security problems would go away.
Incidently, these comments come from someone who has written a few million lines of code in fortran, visual basic, etc. and who started using PC's in the IBM DOS days.
After my Ubuntu netbook and looking at the new netbook stuff–Ubuntu Netbook Remix for netbooks coming out end of April, I am sold on Ubuntu software.
I even loaded Ubuntu on all 3 of home computers and have not had one regret. I was scared at first, but my old computers came to life. Dell claims 30% netbooks are Ubuntu. I think Dell can count better than MS.
How many Apple netbooks sold at this time 0.
Our K-12 school system went to openoffice and saved over a million a yr in MS office royalties.
I am an education technology analyst and we run MAC OS X and Windows XP on all our desktops. I wanted to give everyone the ability to run whatever they wanted. If they have a windows only application we run it inside of Virtual Box by Sun which is free. I have to say I am very impressed with MAC OS X and I still love windows so I get the best of both worlds.
Based upon my experience, the folks that say they will switch to the Mac OS aren't the actual decision-makers anyway.
It is unrealistic to think that an enterprise can switch from Windows to Mac very easily. The business users do not care to know anything about the computers that they use every day, much less learn a new operating system no matter how simple.
I recently replaced the Windows operating system on an older PC with Ubuntu. In twenty minutes, the new OS was up and running along with OpenOffice. I have since replaced all windows on that PC with other Open source software. What a breath of fresh air to have something run as fast and flawless as this.
Windows 7 will be so awesome. With it, you'll be able to do word processing, spreadsheets, play games, even browse the internet! It comes with a nifty calculator too. Get Windows 7 no matter what it costs.
Microsoft will continue to dominate the business market.
Half the people in this IT study probably have no say in the actual deployment of said systems.
Open source is way too hard to support for large corporations to take seriously and Mac is too expensive.
"as far as microsoft responding to your complaints josh, get REAL man…since when do you think MS will even give you the time of day let alone listen to your lemming, techno-noobie complaints."
Agreed. But then I'd expect a monopolistic corporate behemouth like MSFT to be arrogant and out of touch with "the little people" who use their products.
"MS knows most of its users are not smart enough to actually use the Windows OS effectively, so they attempt to make it VERY SIMPLE for the VERY SIMPLE MINDED LEMMINGS.
in doing so, they’ve only confused the S#^T out of the 99.99% of lemmings that use computers."
So, your argument is that:
1. MSFT believes its customers are extremely stupid.
2. MSFT responds by attempting to dumb-down their OS, but actually confuses their users, so fails miserably in the attempt.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the company or its products.
If you're an IT Manager and considering Apple in a large enterprise environment congratulations! you have just lost your job and credibility!
maddawg is right, many if not most people who have a computer don't understand anything about it, like where a given file is stored. They memorize procedures and hope for the best. When confused they guess.
MS has done a terrible job educating the masses. Monkeying around with special paths to a users data adds to the confusion. All the security warnings mean nothing to 99% of their users.
Further, most users can't arrange two windows to copy a file from A to B. They don't know an alias from a file or storage from RAM.
Not saying the Mac is any better in that regard.
So many features that go into OS X and Windows will only be appreciated by a small percentage of users.
MS and Apple shouldn't share the blame alone. It blows my mind how many people depend on a computer 8 hours a day and take zero initiative to understand it or get education. Mind-boggling.
I work as a IT specialist in a 6000+ staff organisation and we use SuSE, Ubuntu and various linux based appliances. We dramatically reduced costs by going linux, mysql, openoffice & firefox. We spent our savings on massively improving our comms infrastructure. Reliability and productivity has also shot up dramatically.
lmao…a study on vista disaster and its effects.
let me tell you the effects:
if you're a novice computer user and not technically inclined, then vista is NOT for you.
i've had vista since it came out on all my home pc's and have not had a single glitch of anykind.
vista is fast, stable and feature rich. yes it takes more resources than i'd like but the new vista, aka Win7 has addressed that.
lets not forget you technologically noobie lemmings, Win7 is only vista cleaned up a bit while addressing a few of the issues most lemmings raised.
as far as microsoft responding to your complaints josh, get REAL man…since when do you think MS will even give you the time of day let alone listen to your lemming, techno-noobie complaints.
MS knows most of its users are not smart enough to actually use the Windows OS effectively, so they attempt to make it VERY SIMPLE for the VERY SIMPLE MINDED LEMMINGS.
in doing so, they've only confused the S#^T out of the 99.99% of lemmings that use computers.
bottom line, if you want to be GOOD with computers and the technology they bring, YOU MUST LEARN AND UNDERSTAND the computers and technology they bring…not just be able to turn it on and install a game or MS Word; but understand why the OS can make the computer do what it does.
i expect most of you to continue down your roads of technological despair and continue to complain about the technologies you have absolutely no idea how to operate!
and for those of you that do continue down your technological road of despair, PLEASE move to another OS because Windows is simply, much to much for you to handle.
And why does Ubuntu look nearly as attractive as Mac OS?
Ubuntu is free and you can get support for it. It has grown into an easy to use Linux distro.
Macs are expensive and a closed platform. Moving to Mac OS means spending at least $1000/node. You can move to Ubuntu for the cost of the workers who deploy it.
The idea that the Mac OS will reduce administrative overhead doesnt play well in larger environments. Having used both Windows and Mac OS in 500+ node environments I can honestly say that macs are less flexible and more expensive to deal with. The tools that large environments tend to leverage when using Windows definitely offset any management benefits Macs enjoy (ie. ARD). Mass deployment for Windows machines is far less clunky. Unit costs are a lot cheaper and tech support is also cheaper. Warranties for business desktops are generally 3 years although you can purchase extended warranties up to 5 years from vendors like HP. The Apple 3 year warranty is and additional $150+/- per unit. Additionally, they release new operating systems far too frequently for corporate users and will require users to upgrade to the new OS to fix bugs that arent resolved in the old OS. Even viruses affect Mac users because they will unknowingly send viruses through email and cause the organizations email server to get blacklisted. I have seen it happen. The list goes on and on and on.
Switch to Macs if you want but they arent the "Easy" button that people think they are. At least not in the Enterprise.
As a point of reference, I would like to see the Windows 7 data compared to that of Vista and XP during similar time frames. I wonder if the data isn't just reflective of natural upgrade cycles. There is a lot of positive Windows 7 buzz out there.
Thinking about switching to Mac/Linux? That's one thing … deploying Mac/Linux across an Enterprise is an entirely different story …
I would love to see a case study delving into the Vista Disaster and its effects.
Vista has been reduced productivity at my home and office. I somehow feel validated knowing that this is a shared experience.
After all these years, I am going to buy a Mac soon and leave Windows behind because of Vista and MSFT's response to my thoughtful complaints. I hope a MSFT exec reads this article and reader comments.
An IT manager is not going to make the decision to switch from Windows to Mac at any major corporation, this is a senior mgmt decision.
"What happened between 2008 and 2009 to make Apple’s prospects as an alternative OS drop below where it was even in 2007?"
The economy, and the realization that IT guys want to keep their jobs… OSX requires less IT time, and switching almost immediately allows corporations to save on redundant IT personnel. My company is small (25 employees), but I was able to release my full time 'keep the damn systems running' guy completely. This, I believe, is also why IT departments tend to push variations of LINUX. OSX is UNIX based, just like linux, runs all our software, INCLUDING specialized UNIX software. and never (so far) crashes! No wonder the geeks keep arguing against it….. AND our two XServe machines talk seamlessly, and easily with all the new desktops and laptops our staff was screaming FOR after years of screaming AT windows boxes. Cost to us was about $40,000, no retraining WAS REQUIRED beyond a 60 minute group talk on day one, AND we were able to cut 4 x the upgrade cost by reducing the upkeep, IT support, and CONSTANT maintenance time. Net cost? We saved about $130,000 in YEAR ONE by buying MORE EXPENSIVE, but far better machines with OSX.
Not going back
folks who said who will switch to Mac OS X in 2007 really switched to Mac OS X? OR it was just a wish
You know, I hated Vista and a lot of techie's did too.
But I've been talking to the techies and they are goo goo about Windows 7…. They've been running the beta of it and say it's tighter, so much faster and better than Vista… They feel MS has gotten it right.
I dont' know if it will make me switch back from Apple, but don't count Windows 7 out.
How about Microsoft stops pushing operating systems down everyone's throat?
I'm on XP Professional and absolutely love the platform. It only took them 2-years of updates to get it working properly.
I'm tired of having software forced on us. Microsoft should concentrate on some cloud initiatives and SaaS solution as opposed to enterprise software.
BTW. Vista sucked and was put out anyway. What makes us think they will find a change of heart and give us something good with Windows 7?
They asked "IT Professionals"? Who are they? IT Pros, I guess that means people like me, are always looking at alternatives. That doesn't mean that the business people will listen or that we would not come to the same conclusion as before which is to buy MS products.
I do not believe anything on these graphs even if I understood the data the graphs were presenting. What is the data on the x axis? This article is poorly written.
The percentage considering OS X is only down very slightly over 2008. Personally, I would have expected this to drop more than this over last year given that WIndows 7 has been much more favorably reviewed than was Vista at this time last year. The recession is probably dimming all prospects of a major upgrade in the next year.
"What happened between 2008 and 2009 to make Apple’s prospects as an alternative OS drop below where it was even in 2007?"
The economy exploded….
It's probably a different survey instrument, in which case a small variation can lead to very different results.
I think the results are very encouraging for Mac OS. If only half of those IT managers who said they were thinking of moving to OS X actually did so, that would represent a tremendous shift to OS X, and a major concern to the windows hedgemony (which is already falling apart).
Wether IT will do this or not, the consumer market is already moving, which is why Microsoft is targeting the Macintosh in their 'we concede Mac is better but we are still CHEAP' ads.
85% is the same percentage who would not upgrade to Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista in the first years they came out. So what is the surprise and point of the article? Windows has vast legacy systems in companies that cannot jump at the latest version. They do eventually do so however over a 2-5 year span. On the Mac, it is much easier to do so for there is less legacy, and it is also easier technically to make the change. Lousy Vista will sell 400M copies and somewhat better Win 7 will sell a similar if not higher amount. That is 800+M units of Windows sold, while Mac OS will sell ~65M in that period. The Mac OS, while a better system, has fallen to a paltry 3% sales worldwide. The OS wars ended two decades ag when Windows became the global standard. With the IPhone OS Apple has a chance to become the standard, though I suspect it won’t because it only works on only one device, the IPhone, instead of the dozens of devices that the other emerging phone OSs will work on. That’s because the world demands choice, even if it has to sacrifice a little quality. Apple could be making the same mistake all over again with its phone that it did with its PC. Check back in 3+ years to see if this is true.
The amount of interest customers – including Windows 7 customers – STILL have in downgrading to XP should be of serious concern to Microsoft.
Or maybe they should just be really proud of XP?
What happened between 2008 and 2009 to make Apple’s prospects as an alternative OS drop below where it was even in 2007?
My guess: Price of hardware. Apple hardware is perceived as more expensive (a perception Microsoft is reinforcing with its "Apple Tax" campaign.) Total Cost of Ownership savings are nice, but not if you don't have the extra money to invest at the beginning of the life-cycle. Also a lot of IT departments have zero Mac experience, which makes it a lot harder to integrate and support Mac systems. Support costs are most visible on desktops due to the number of end-users that require it.
And why does Ubuntu look nearly as attractive as Mac OS?
My guess: Price of software including support. Red Hat comes with at least the appearance of a tail that's bigger than Ubuntu. Deploying Linux isn't free, even if the initial software purchase is free or nearly so.
Two good questions…
For a more insightful analysis of this, check out CNET's article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10217917-75.html?tag=mncol
It does a nice job de-sensationalizing the report.
What happened between 2008 and 2009 to make Apple's prospects as an alternative OS drop below where it was even in 2007?
And why does Ubuntu look nearly as attractive as Mac OS?
I'm going to upgrade to Windows 7 right away. Vista sucks so W7 can't be worse. I'm not going to give up my Mac though.