Will you be moving to Windows 7 during the next year, or will Vista disappointment, economic doom and gloom or compatibility concerns keep you away like 84 percent of business folks surveyed have said?
The Windows 7 Release Candidate is nearly with us, complete with plenty of reported security problems, not to mention confusion surrounding there being no less than six versions of Windows 7 to choose from. Yet despite all the carefully timed marketing from Microsoft, it would appear that not everyone is convinced of the desirability of the new OS - at least in the short term.
One new survey of more than 1100 IT professionals from small, mid-sized, and large IT organisations worldwide has revealed that an astonishing 84 percent have absolutely no plans to upgrade to Windows 7 during the course of the next year - and that in the face of some pretty encouraging and enthusiastic reports from beta testers so far. The company which commissioned the survey, KACE, tells us that the leading concerns cited for this no adoption/slow adoption strategy were software compatibility, cost of implementation and the current economic environment. It also says that concerns were apparent across IT departments of all sizes. 72 percent indicated they were actually rather more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying with an outdated XP operating system.
If this were not bad enough news for Microsoft, the survey also pointed towards 50 percent of those being questioned seriously considering a move to a non-Windows OS such as Linux or more probably the Mac OS, which 27 percent of those considering this option cited as the most likely contender. "The research shows that despite the early enthusiasm for Windows 7, organisations are still wary about adoption, demonstrating what could be described as an even overly cautious approach" said Diane Hagglund, senior research analyst for Dimensional Research and the survey’s author. "Negative public perception of Vista seems to have helped build this layer of distrust with Windows 7."