“In the latest sign that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system may be destined for less than overwhelming commercial success, a new InformationWeek survey has found that nearly one third of businesses do not plan on upgrading their computers to the much-hyped software,” Paul McDougall reports for InformationWeek.
McDougall reports, “Tech professionals at the businesses surveyed were asked the following question: ‘When, if ever, does your company plan to purchase and install Windows Vista?'”
“One quarter of the 612 survey respondents said they were already using the new OS; 13% said they would do so in the next 12 months, while 27% said their companies would adopt Windows Vista more than one year from now,” McDougall reports.
McDougall reports, “But in what will surely be viewed as disappointing news at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, a full 30% of those surveyed said they had no plans to upgrade their systems to Windows Vista — not ever.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Don” and “Matt” for the heads up.]
15% are still trying to extract old data from frozen PeeCees; 20% are still chasing elusive spyware that three security apps cannot deal with; 40% are still hunting for drivers for at least one device…. Upgrade? “Go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Remember the days when some of us were a bit worried that Vista might be fantastic; might make Mac OS X look bad, outdated, outclassed?”
That would have been very hard to take, but if Microsoft had actually (by some miracle) hit a home run with Vists, Appple would have been more than up to the challenge and the whole computer industry would have benefited. As things are, Apple has no one to complete with but itself. Fortunately, this is exactly what Steve Jobs, thus Apple, thrives on. It’s wonderful that Steve and Apple are constantly trying to outdo themselves, to make their most popular products obsolute. It’s wonderful because it is so rarely seen in business—or anywhere else, for that matter.
@alansky
Uh, yeah maybe… I’m a huge Mac fan, but the picture you paint is techno-utopianism taken to a new level. Here’s my point(s): Apple isn’t there yet – really, and if Apple ever really does get to own 90% (or whatever it is) of the world’s desktops then they will be in the same grave danger that has overcome MS. I want Apple to have a nice big market share, but lack of competition is big business’s biggest enemy – even Apple’s.
If MS every really does march its way down to something less than 50% market share, then one of the most exciting possibilities for me is that their may be more, maybe many more developers that will feel inspired to bring ever better OS platforms to the market place. Imagine a whole bunch of Apple Inc.s all competing with each other – do you realize how fast software advancements would happen? It boggles the mind. It would, in short, be the exact opposite of what we have today.
I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
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MW: “had” – as in MS had it’s chance, (x10).
Would that where I work was so lucky – even though I have a Mac on my desk, my boss wants me to be in the “Vista Testing Group” to help everyone else who will have to deal with Vista when our IT department rolls it out this coming Fall – they “say” it will begin taking place in October. Will be interesting to see how realistic that is…
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(My last paragraph grammar corrected, and this time with feeling.)
If MS really does march its way down to something less than 50% market share, then one of the most exciting possibilities for me is that there may be more, maybe many more developers that will feel inspired to bring ever better OS platforms to the market place. Imagine a whole bunch of Apple Inc.s all competing with each other – do you realize how fast software advancements would happen? It boggles the mind. It would, in short, be the exact opposite of what we have today.
“I want Apple to have a nice big market share, but lack of competition is big business’s biggest enemy – even Apple’s.”
Mr. Peabody, you misunderstand me. I am merely stating the obvious—that Apple currently has no competition. I, too, would love to see “a whole bunch of Apple Inc’s all competing with each other.” But this, unfortunately, is the Utopian vision. What we have today certainly is the exact opposite.
“Moore’s Law” says processing power doubles every two years. Vista took over 5 years and nowhere near ‘doubles’ XPs utility. In fact, many have noted that Vista actually has features that detract from it’s utility (DRM, lack of drivers, software incompatibility, rigid activation, etc).
For the sake of argument, let’s give Vista a “90% of XP” rating derived from (increased eye-candy, increased MS revenue for pushing it into the channel, increased box seller for the extra hadware requirements) – (DRM, driver lack, broken software). Now that’s 10% decline over 5 years. This figure yields the ‘growth rate’ of negative 2% (rounded off −2.1072%) per year. Ergo, we conjecture (using just a little more rounding):
Ballmer’s Law Window’s utility halves every 30 years.
70% are nuts
When you have a system that already is “good enough” why change? Microsoft added no real value to Windows with Vista, hence not reason to switch.
I’m surprised that 25% of “tech professionals” are already using Vista, actually.
I wonder if they mean “yeah, I have it installed on a test machine,” or if they are actually running it in production.
The Windows admin tools for managing Active Directory accounts (among other things) don’t even install properly on Vista at this point. Microsoft admits this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930056/en-us
I have already come across several things on the MS website that say “This issue has been resolved in Windows “Longhorn” Server” – which isn’t even available yet as a commercial release!
What a disaster! Microsoft is alienating their most loyal traditional fan base (the IT/MCSE crowd) with all this Vista/Longhorn stuff.
Macaday:
“They may not know it yet, but…
70% of businesses will upgrade to OSX.”
1. Don’t count on it.
A huge chunk of MS windows users are using 98 and earlier. This trend will only accelerate with Vista.
2. You have a lot of faith in Microsoft, which frankly is not warranted by their demonstrated level of (in)competence.
“a full 30% of those surveyed said they had no plans to upgrade …”
That’s too bad. How will they ever know what they’ve been missing?
In a year or two businesses won’t have a choice when they need to buy a new computer. Microsoft will stop licensing XP and that’s all that will be available. Unless they buy a Mac.
> I wonder how many Mac users are upgrading to 10.5? I’m running 10.3 and it’s good enough for me.
It doesn’t matter. For Apple, Mac OS X is a means of selling more Macs. Sure, there is revenue from selling Mac OS X in a box, but the main purpose of Mac OS X is to make new Macs more attractive to potential customers. Once the Mac is sold, Apple would rather have you buy a new Mac than upgrade the OS on your existing Mac. If you’re happy with Panther, no problem…
Microsoft on the other hand lives or dies by Windows. If Vista continues to be a fiasco, Microsoft will start its slow death march. It doesn’t know how to do much except leverage its Windows monopoly.
“If Vista continues to be a fiasco, Microsoft will start its slow death march”
25% using Vista now =Fiasco.
Another 13% within a year=Fiasco.
All but 30% eventually to upgrade=Fiasco
If those numbers are representative of the worldwide uptake of Vista, that means only 600 million upgrade copies will be sold! Pathetic.