Two years after Vista launch, 71% of business PCs still running XP | Hacker News Reader

Two years after Vista launch, 71% of business PCs still running XP

blogs.zdnet.com

22 pointscrocus29 comments

I believe this is a case of self-confirmation bias.

Checking for similar articles from 2003, around 2 years after the launch of XP, I found this gem: "Windows XP, the most current version of Windows, was found on just 6.6 percent of the [business] machines" (http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39161686,0...).

Exactly.

To be relevant, you'd need to consider this against XP's adoption taking into account rate of machine turnover.

Few people actually upgrade OS.

Yes, this means there hasn't been a compelling reason to upgrade OS. But that doesn't mean that much. There hasn't been a very compelling reason to upgrade machines in general.

It might signal that MS were solving problems with Vista (security mostly) that didn't really exist.

As I'm probably overly fond of pointing out, Vista is what caused me to switch to Linux.

I know the businesses I work with have no interest in Vista, and probably won't switch to Windows 7, either -- at least not anytime soon.

I'm advising all those who can to go to thin clients. That is actually about 90% of the business users who can easily use thin clients. They're often just as fast, far more secure, and so much easier to administer.

What distro do you use? What apps and desktop?

I use Ubuntu right now. It has the best support forums and frequent updates, and is the best distro I've used over the years despite some glaring bugs.

The most common apps I use are Firefox, gedit, Audacious, the shell, Brasero, VMWare (for testing Exchange setups in Windows), AbiWord, GIMP, Asunder, VLC and Pidgin.

I started out on Red Hat 5.0 (not RHEL) in the late 90s. Used it full-time for about a year, then switched to BeOS and dual-booting that with Windows. Over the years, I've also used Caldera, Corel Linux, Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), SUSE and some others I am sure I'm forgetting.

My desktop is Gnome, though it's not nearly as customizable as I'd like (used to be, though, before the developers removed it all). I don't care for KDE that much, though.

I'm going to try Fedora Core 11 when it comes out, but will probably stick with Ubuntu, I'm guessing.

Thanks. I've switched plenty of distros (like most Linux users I guess). For now, I'm sticking with Debian. I find it quite fast and lean with xfce.

One thing that's frustrated me in the past is that after having been a Windows users for years, I suddenly tried completely switching to Linux without knowing much about the commands and file structure.

I still struggle with app updates and dependencies but I'm trying to switch slowly, one task at a time from XP to Debian.

Do you recommend any books or good manuals? I know I can find loads if I just google it, but that's also been my problem. There's way too much info and it's too annoying to look for one tiny thing in that mass of text.

Thanks for your help.

Yeah, I think every Linux user switches distros over the years to find one that suits them best. It's always interesting (to me) to hear what path others have trod along the way.

I was lucky in that my girlfriend was much more deeply into Linux than I was when I decided to get rid of Windows altogether almost two years ago now. She was a big help. If I didn't know something, I'd just ask her. Unfortunately, I can't offer my girlfriend as a resource. ;-)

Even though I consider myself a geek (and you sound like you are as well), this book, Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, helped me out:

http://www.amazon.com/Ubuntu-Linux-Non-Geeks-Project-Based-G...

Since you're using Debian, a lot of that will apply, too.

I also just read a whole lot of man pages and used the great Ubuntu Guide site:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Intrepid

And I used the Linux command reference PDF here:

http://fosswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf

And of course a lot of Googling.

It does bother me that Ubuntu is coming to mean "Linux" to a lot of people, but it is a good distro.

What do you like about xfce? Never tried it myself.

Thanks, those links look great.

You're lucky with the gf mate. Mine just keeps asking me, "What are these secret clever things you keep doing with the computer?"

The reason I want to move away from Windows is to learn more about how Linux works and use it to do more fun things. I've used Ubuntu a few times and I liked it. But I find because it's deliberately aimed at non-geeks, it has too much fluff.

And that's why I like xfce. It's a really minimal, simple desktop - less distraction for me. You should try it.

And "minimal" here doesn't mean something necessarily aimed at power users like fluxbox, ratpoison or awesome.

I've always thought of xfce as a sort of gnome-lite-- it looks just as pretty and has all the gui toolbars and widgets that you would expect, but uses a tiny fraction of the resources. It's a great desktop environment for laptops and older computers.

I don't have any book recommendations, at least specifically with Debian. I've always been able to get an answer on the web.

Now, I usually start with http://www.debian-administration.org to get some better ideas of how I can get some task done.

I also find some good tips for Debian and Ubuntu at http://articles.slicehost.com

Thanks for the links.

Me too. Switched in April 2007 to openSUSE, now running 11.1...

I finally switched to Vista myself. All in all, it's nice to be running an OS that's not ancient, but that's about it.

I'll switch completely to OS X as soon as I can though.

Windows XP is actually a very good product so why switch?

In Redmond, Windows Current has generally been regarded as the biggest competitor to Windows Next, and there comes a point where people won't pay $hundreds for another dialog box prepended on the workflow for changing your IP address.

You'd think that Embrace, Extend, Sell would be a better mantra than Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but I guess that's why I'm not a Windows product manager.

Thats why you can't buy WindowsCurrent-1 Business would be perfectly happy sticking with W2k or NT4, there haven't been many breakthroughs in the technology needed to type a memo or update a sales spreadsheet.

The only way the money keeps flowing to Redmond is that new machines only come with WindowsNew and eventually everything else has to update because it's a pain managing a mixed environment.

Indeed. Really all most companies want is continued support (patches). This model is crying for a subscription arrangement and MS was tripping over themselves trying to figure out how to make Windows a subscription business. It seems like it should be possible...

Microsoft tried the subscription model and it failed miserably.

They eventually gave up and switched all the subscription licenses to perpetual one... A savvy colleague of mine immediately went to the store and bought all the subscription licenses on the shelf (they were considerably cheaper than a full license).

It's funny - I used to say this about Windows 2000.

Vista introduced features that let network admins have more control over machines on the network, and Win7 kept those features, and fixed many of the infamous Vista problems. So there is an incentive for corporate IT depts to upgrade to Win7.

For consumers, most won't intentionally upgrade. They'll do so by deciding they need new hardware, and probably Windows will come bundled with it.

I worked for a VERY large international bank which just started rolling out XP internally about two years ago. I mean, they need to be careful about stability, but come on!

We went to 'anything but Vista'. Which mostly meant a mix of XP and Xubuntu. We've probably saved between £1-2,000 per host that would've otherwise been upgraded and extended the refresh cycle by a year to accomodate Windows 7 and Core i7 when it comes out and becomes cheap enough later this year.

The lack of change does not have much to do with Vista. The main reason is that businesses are slow to make changes. Once they are comfortable they will not want to touch anything, specially if that means coming out of pocket. Now that being said, yes, Vista sucks.

I wish I could vote you down because this just isn't true, Vista does not suck. This statement is so very tired that I sometimes wonder why I still hear it. What is it that makes Vista suck to you? I've used Vista for 6+ months now for work and I can't name anything particularly sucky about it. Conversely, just the other day I discovered DEP which actually seems like a feature that they should have touted more in the marketing.

Why is there still mindless hatred of Vista? I'm actually kind of excited about Windows 7 which I can't say I've ever been able to claim about any release of Windows.

Sorry if I offended you in any ways. I used Vista for one year before my laptop died. Although the graphics were nice, I found the entire experience less rewarding then using XP.

I wish I had 71% of businesses running any versions of my software.

2 years?! feels like just a few months ago.

Vista Fail. I've been using XP since Jan 2004 with no issues, no re-install, still works fine. Why the hell would I upgrade to downgrade my performance. Who needs a bloated candy-colored version of Windows? A new OS should be faster, not slower. Try again, Microsoft. Until then I'll stick with XP and OSX on my Mac.

I can't believe there are companies that are such suckers that they'd be willing to pay a Vista license and then an upgrade to Windows 7. But if there are companies like that, MSFT is right to treat them as bad as they do. They fully deserve it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com